PUBG Melee Weapons Guide: Does the Pan Really Block Bullets?

Two players hit the same roof in Pochinki with nothing on the floor but a frying pan and a crowbar. One of them grabs the pan. Thirty seconds later that player is walking away with a full kit, and the other one is in the lobby wondering how a cooking implement beat a steel bar. It wasn't luck. The pan does a third more damage per swing than every other melee weapon in PUBG: Battlegrounds, and it also happens to be a bullet-resistant plate you wear on your back for free.

Melee in PUBG is a punchline right up until the fifteen seconds where it decides your match. This guide covers all four melee weapons, exactly how much they hit for through each vest level, how the pan's bullet-blocking actually works, and the specific situations where swinging beats shooting.

One honest caveat up front: Krafton does not publish official damage tables, and the community wikis say so themselves. The body-damage numbers below match across both the Fandom wiki and the pubg.wiki.gg dataset, and they line up exactly with the published vest reduction tiers, so they're solid. Headshot values are where those datasets disagree — so you won't find a headshot number quoted here as fact.

The four melee weapons and what they hit for

There are exactly four melee weapons in the game: the Pan, the Machete, the Sickle, and the Crowbar. The pan is classed as uncommon loot; the other three are common. Here's what a body hit lands for against each vest tier:

Two things fall out of that table immediately.

First, the machete, sickle, and crowbar are mechanically identical on damage. Same 60 to a bare chest, same reductions, same swing. Whichever one you find is the one you have; there is no melee tier list hiding underneath those three. Pick the one that spawned.

Second, the pan is 33% stronger per hit than all of them and it is the only one that stops bullets. If a pan and a machete are on the same floor, this is not a decision. The armor math in the table also confirms melee is not some special damage type that ignores plates — those reductions are the same 30%, 40%, and 55% you get on any bullet, which our armor and helmet guide breaks down in full.

The pan blocks bullets, and that is not a meme

The pan blocks incoming fire both while equipped and while holstered on your back, working as a small shield either way. Per the wiki, it stops rounds from every ranged weapon in the game, up to and including shotgun pellets and an AWM round out of a care package. There is a dedicated deflection sound file for it — that metallic clang is the game telling you a bullet just bounced off your cookware.

This has been in the game since the first monthly update in April 2017, when players started clipping themselves getting shot in the backside and hearing the ricochet instead of losing health. And the best part of the story: it was never designed as a feature. The accepted account, per the wiki's own trivia and the contemporary reporting it cites, is that the pan had collision in its code for unrelated reasons and the bulletproofing was an accident the devs decided to leave alone. Nine years later players still call it "Level 4 Armor" and Krafton still hasn't taken it out.

Now the part nobody says out loud: it is a small plate on a large person. The pan covers a narrow patch of your lower back. You cannot turn around, aim your rear at a sniper on a hill, and expect to survive — the odds a specific incoming round lands on that exact footprint are low. What it does is convert a small slice of the shots you'd otherwise eat while running away into nothing at all. It's a free lottery ticket that occasionally pays out a whole match, not a defensive plan. Actual cover still wins, which is the entire point of the cover and concealment guide.

The takeaway is simple: pick up a pan whenever you see one, then never think about it again. It costs you nothing, it lives in its own slot, and it might delete a bullet.

What melee actually does through armor

Damage numbers only matter as hit counts. Everyone in PUBG has 100 HP, so here's how many clean body swings each weapon needs to put someone down:

Against a fresh, unarmored player off the plane, the pan and the machete are the same weapon — two swings, done. The gap opens the moment your target picks up armor. Through a Level 3 Military Vest, the pan needs 3 hits at 36 apiece; the machete needs 4 at 27. Four connected melee swings on a fully kitted player is a fantasy scenario unless they're AFK, which tells you everything about where melee belongs: the first ninety seconds of a match, and nowhere else.

That's also why melee is a landing-scramble tool specifically. The window where your opponent has no vest is the window where two hits kill, and that window closes fast. Our early game guide covers how quickly the ground state changes once people start looting.

When melee is the right call

There are four situations where reaching for a melee weapon is genuinely correct.

1. The no-gun landing scramble. You hit a roof, there's nothing but a pan, and someone is already sprinting at you. Two body hits kills them if they're unarmored — which they are, because they landed twelve seconds ago too. Swing first and keep moving; standing still to trade swings is a coin flip, and circling is not. This is the exact scenario the hot drop guide drills, and it's why hot droppers grab a pan on the way past even when a pistol is available.

2. When you need silence. A melee kill makes no gunshot, no muzzle flash, and no tracer. In a compound where three squads are converging, the difference between a shot and a swing is whether the other two teams know your exact position. Third-partying works because gunfire is a beacon — see the third-party guide for why the loudest team usually dies second.

3. Finishing a knocked player without burning ammo or noise. A downed enemy is not shooting back. If you've already cleared the area and you're low on the caliber you need, a couple of swings closes it out quietly. Do it behind cover, not in the open, and only once you're sure the rest of their squad isn't watching the body — the reviving and DBNO guide explains why teams bait exactly this.

4. When your gun is dry mid-fight and they're close. Swapping to melee at three meters is faster than a reload if you're empty and they're already on top of you. Rare, but it happens, and it's better than dying to an animation you chose.

Notice what isn't on that list: anything after the first circle, against anyone with armor, at any range over a few meters.

When melee gets you killed

Chasing the swing when a gun is ten meters away. If there is a shotgun on the floor across the room and you're both empty-handed, the correct play is often the gun, not the fight — but only if you can reach it without eating three free hits. The rule from the hot drop guide holds: if you're both empty and close, swing; if there's real distance, run to the loot. Decide fast, then commit. Splitting the difference is how you die holding a crowbar next to an ungrabbed AKM.

Meleeing anyone with a vest on. Three connected swings on a Level 3 target, each with a wind-up and a recovery, while they have a rifle. Do not.

Deliberately using the pan as armor. Turning your back on a fight to "tank" with cookware is how you die facing the wrong direction with no gun up. The pan protects you passively while you do sensible things. It is not a shield you deploy.

Forgetting you're holding it. The worst melee death is the one where you looted a gun, never swapped off slot 4, and rounded a corner swinging a sickle at a guy with a UMP. Check what's in your hands after every loot cycle — the looting and inventory guide has the priority order that keeps this from happening.

Slot 4 mechanics worth knowing

Melee weapons live in weapon slot 4 — bound to the 4 key on PC and D-pad up on Xbox — which means they never compete with your two primary slots or your pistol. Carrying a pan costs you literally nothing you'd otherwise carry.

The equip timing matters more than people think. The wiki lists melee weapons at a 150 ms pickup delay and a 500 ms ready delay. Half a second to bring the thing up sounds trivial written down; it is an eternity when the other guy is already swinging. If you're expecting a melee scramble on landing, have it in your hands before contact, not after.

The pan's in-game description is "Not for cooking," which is the only piece of PUBG item flavor text anyone has ever quoted back at me. There's also a Windows achievement, Don't Pan Me Bro!, for killing another player with the frying pan — the single cheapest achievement in the game to farm on a landing, and a decent excuse to practice the swing spacing.

Melee myths worth killing

"The pan only blocks bullets when you're holding it." False. It blocks equipped and holstered. Holstered is where it does most of its work, because that's where it spends the match.

"The machete one-shots unarmored players." This one is written on the wiki's own summary page for the machete, and its own damage table contradicts it — 60 damage against a 100 HP target is not a kill. It takes two. This is a good reminder that a wiki summary paragraph and a wiki data table are not the same reliability tier.

"Melee ignores armor." No. Every melee weapon eats the standard 30 / 40 / 55 percent reductions from Level 1, 2, and 3 vests, exactly like bullets do.

"The pan is a joke item the devs added for laughs." The pan being in the game is a joke. The pan being bulletproof is an accident of collision code that got left in and became one of the most recognizable mechanics in the battle royale genre. Those are different things.

"Melee is useless, just take the pistol." Situationally wrong. On a bare landing, two pan swings kills faster than most players can land four P92 rounds under pressure — and the pistol runs out. Our best pistols ranking covers when a sidearm genuinely is the better grab.

Quick Action Checklist

• Grab a pan on sight — it hits for 80 to the body and blocks bullets on your back for free
• Treat the machete, sickle, and crowbar as identical; they all do 60 body damage
• Remember 2 pan swings kill an unarmored player, but 3 are needed through a Level 3 vest
• Use melee in the landing scramble, for silent finishes, and when you're dry at knife range
• Never melee an armored player who has a gun up — the hit count is not survivable
• Bring the melee weapon up before contact; there's a half-second ready delay
• Check your hands after every loot cycle so you don't round a corner holding a crowbar
• Keep treating actual cover as your armor — the pan is a lottery ticket, not a plan